One dead in clashes with Islamists in Palestinian camp in Lebanon

Reuters Staff

2 Min Read

SIDON, Lebanon (Reuters) - At least one person was killed and several others were injured on Saturday in renewed clashes between Palestinian security forces and Sunni Islamists in Ain el-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, local sources said.

Saturday’s clashes broke out after fighters belonging to the mainstream Palestinian group Fateh, led by the West Bank-based Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, fired at a district where the leader of an Islamist group was believed to be taking cover.

Scores of families were forces to flee the area.

The fighting began on Thursday after the leader of an armed faction sympathetic to the Islamist Badr group fired at the headquarters of a joint security force comprising the main Palestinian factions.

In April seven people were killed in clashes in the camp between the Badr group and the joint security force after it deployed there.

Lebanon’s Palestinian camps, which date back to the 1948 war between Israel and its Arab neighbours, mainly fall outside the jurisdiction of Lebanese security services. There are some 450,000 Palestinian refugees living in 12 camps in Lebanon.